During the DARPA SCENICC program, J. Ford, et al., demonstrated that CFBs provide a compelling route to compact, wide angle imagers. Monocentric lenses readily provide diffraction-limited images over wide field but onto a hemispherically curved image surface. They demonstrated visible CFBs can be tapered, cut and polished to relay curved images to flat sensors. We have shown that this provides a volumetric imaging efficiency a hundredfold larger than bulk optics can produce; a hundred times the resolution in the same volume or a hundred times less volume for the same resolution. Ford's work leveraged commercial fiber bundles available for the visible spectrum based on silica. We have developed hybrid fiber bundles using step-index confinement between chalcogenide glass cores and polymer cladding with high index-contrast. The high contrast is necessary to provide tight confinement to the high-index As-Se core with minimal crosstalk between closely spaced cores. Tight confinement also minimizes absorption losses in the PEI polymer cladding. The high contrast of this system also provides a large NA to optimize coupling into the CFB from fast lenses. We introduce disorder into the core radius as a mechanism to further decouple adjacent cores, reduce crosstalk and increase fill-factor. We present coupled-mode theory, modal crosstalk superposition, and finite-element modelling to quantify coupling losses and crosstalk as a function of geometry and disorder. We fabricated preforms, drew small fiber bundles and characterized optical properties of the bundles to aid scale-up to megapixel MWIR CFBs.

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Phase Synthesis is a fundamental operation in Smart Antennas and other Phased Array systems based on beamforming. There are increasing commercial applications for Integrated Phased Arrays due to their low cost, size and power and also because the RF and digital signal processing can be performed on the same chip. These low cost beamforming applications have augmented interest in Coupled Phase Locked Loop (CPLL) systems for Phase Synthesis. Previous work on the implementation of Phase Synthesis systems using Coupled PLLs for low cost beamforming had the constraint of a limited phase range of ±90°. The idea behind the thesis is that this phase synthesis range can be increased to ±180° through the use of PLLs employing Phase Frequency Detectors(PFDs), which is a significant improvement over conventional coupled-PLL systems. This work presents the detailed design and measurement results for a phase synthesizer using Coupled PLLs for achieving phase shift in the range of ±180°. Several Coupled PLL architectures are investigated and their advantages and limitations are evaluated in terms of frequency controllability, phase difference synthesis control and phase noise of the systems. A two-PLL system implementation using off the shelf components is presented, which generates a steady-state phase difference in the range ±180° using an adjustable DC control current. This is the proof of concept for doing an IC design for a Coupled Phase Locked Loop system. Commercial applications in the Wireless Medical Telemetry Service (WMTS) band motivate the design of a CPLL system in the 608-614 MHz band. The design methodology is presented which shows the flowchart of the IC design process from the system design specifications to the transistor level design. MATLAB simulations are presented to model the system performance quickly. VerilogA modeling of the CPLL system is performed followed by the IC design of the system and each block is simulated under different process and temperature corners. The transistor level design is then evaluated for its performance in terms of phase difference synthesis and phase noise and compared with the initial MATLAB analysis and improved iteratively. The CPLL system is implemented in IBM 130nm CMOS process and consumes 40mW of power from a 1.2V supply with a phase noise performance of -88 dBc/Hz for 177° phase generation.

Diverse hypotheses are behind the strength degradation in metals due to hydrogen diffusion, leading to a severe, sudden failure. These diverse hypotheses of hydrogen embrittlement include various mechanisms that are responsible for the embrittlement of metals due to hydrogen exposure in their microstructures. This research study focuses on one hydrogen embrittlement mechanism: Hydrogen-Enhanced-Localized-Plasticity (HELP). The HELP is the only single mechanism characterized by promoting localization of plastic flow ahead of the crack by increasing dislocation motion in that region. The current state of the art is a development of a numerical model representing a fully diffusion-mechanical coupled model. This fully coupled model attempts to gain valuable insights into hydrogen's influence on the mechanical properties and the fatigue life of metals, in general. First, detailed development of a numerical approach is illustrated describing how to fully couple the hydrogen diffusion and stresses using a finite element method. The formulation is based on a coupled temperature-displacement procedure using Abaqus. This coupled computational model, described in this first part, is novel because the mechanical part is based on an isotropic-kinematic hardening law. Furthermore, this fully coupled numerical model can capture both a hardening and softening effect of the stress-strain curve when the solution of the plastic properties is dependent on hydrogen. This can also contribute in a complementary way to the results previously shown by other researchers. Though these previous studies used the same hydrogen diffusion model, their mechanical part was based on a power law. Second, this research attempts to delve into the hydrogen effect on the constitutive response of metals undergoing a cyclic load. Hence, based on the HELP theory, this constitutive coupled model can capture different cyclic hardening behaviors. This study can largely contribute to understanding the degradation of the mechanical properties of materials before crack propagation, which has been heavily covered in the literature.

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